Undeterred by the criticism and the acute lack of supplies, Alice continued her work in such appalling conditions that by the eighth month of her pregnancy, her health began to fail.
“I had a violent inflammation of eyes and throat with two days strong fever and strong neuralgia,”[20] she told the Queen in mid-September, and still more worrying was prospect of her imminent confinement in a town filled with disease and ‘without even a married lady in the house’ to assist her. In the event, the baby, Frittie, was born prematurely on October 7th 1870, but, in spite of Alice’s anxieties, the ‘fat, pink’ little boy with pretty features, thrived. Disregarding her exhaustion and myriad of ailments, his mother returned almost immediately to her duties until December when she was finally able to enjoy a brief respite as she took her children to visit the Crown Princess in Berlin.
“It is a great comfort to be with dear Vicky,” she wrote to Queen Victoria. “We spend the evenings alone together, talking or writing out letters.”[21]
Tactfully, she omitted to mention that part of the ‘great comfort’ of being with Vicky was that her sister was helping her by sharing the breast-feeding of little Frittie.
In the course of the conflict the German states were united and, when at last the victorious armies returned home in March 1871, Fritz’s father was elevated from King of Prussia to German Kaiser and Emperor. Though deeply affected by the horror of war, Fritz had proved a gallant and competent leader and his triumphal entry into Berlin was greeted with great applause. To the delight of the crowds he and Vicky appeared in the palace window where the Crown Prince held his little daughter, Sophie, in his arms.
In Hesse there were similar scenes of celebration. Louis’ gallantry had earned him the Order Pour la Mérite and the streets were decorated with triumphant lights and banners:
“Our house will also be illuminated,” Alice explained to her mother, “and I take the two eldest girls [Victoria and Ella] out with me to see it all. It is a thing for them never to forget, this great and glorious though too horrid war.”[22]
In that moment of triumph neither Victoria nor Ella could have known that one day they would suffer the effects of a far more terrible conflict.
The ensuing peace brought a return to a calmer existence for the Crown Princess of the newly unified Germany. In April 1872, she gave birth to her eighth and last child, named Margaret after one of her godmothers, the Queen of Italy. For once Queen Victoria thoroughly approved of the name but within her family the princess was known as ‘Mossy’ on account of her downy hair. Her christening in Berlin was a far less militaristic affair than Sophie’s had been and the guest list of artists, writers and academics, demonstrated that the Crown Princess was no longer prepared to endure the militaristic Prussian influence that had so blighted her early years in Berlin.
Now, with more time to consider the needs of her family, Vicky realised that much of her elder children’s arrogance was due to the flattery they received at court. More than ever she saw the need to take them away from Berlin at every opportunity and was delighted when she found an old country estate, the Bornstaedt, to which she and Fritz could escape with the children for a few months every summer. There, as the family enjoyed a simple life, renovating the house and working on the land, the elder children, free of Bismarck’s influence, became more amenable. The return to Potsdam, however, inevitably brought with it the old tensions and it was increasingly obvious that, while the Crown Princess undoubtedly loved all her children, a clear and natural division had already emerged within the family.
The three eldest – Willy, Charlotte and Henry – continued to disappoint and frustrate their mother. Willy was ‘quite good looking’ but there was no improvement in his arm, and his shyness often created the impression of aloofness; Charlotte’s thin hair, frail physique and poor health were a constant worry; and Henry, who had not ‘grown prettier,’ she continued to describe as ‘ugly.’
For the younger children, however, Vicky had nothing but praise. Waldemar, she said, was so much cleverer than his brothers and so handsome and manly; Moretta clung to her with affection; Sophie was pretty; and Mossy was gifted, good, charming and tender-hearted. The bonds between Vicky and her younger daughters would never be broken.
In Darmstadt, too, the constant increase continued. In June 1872, two months after Mossy’s birth, Alice gave birth to a fourth daughter whom she named Alix because, as she explained to Queen Victoria, the German pronunciation ‘murdered Alice.’
Doted upon by her elder sisters, little ‘merry little’ Alix soon earned the nickname ‘Sunny’ for her ready smile and cheerful disposition but, within a year of her birth, tragedy struck the Hessian household marking the first in a series of misfortunes that would cloud her entire life.
In January 1873, three-year-old Frittie had a slight cut on his ear which continued to bleed profusely for several days. It soon became apparent to Alice that her little boy was suffering from the hereditary condition haemophilia, which had already afflicted her own younger brother Leopold[·]. After some days the wound began to heal and Alice naively hoped that in time he would outgrow the condition.
In the spring, for the good of her health, she travelled to Italy leaving her children in the care of their paternal grandmother who had been given strict instructions about their meals, bedtimes, and hours of study. The much-needed holiday was refreshing and invigorating for Alice but she missed her children terribly and was delighted by the reunion at the beginning of May. A few weeks later, the family enjoyed a long walk and picnic in the countryside beyond Darmstadt prior to Louis’ departure to review the troops in another part of the Grand Duchy. The next morning, Alice sat in bed working through her letters while Frittie and Ernie played beside her. Their game became increasingly boisterous and, when Ernie ran out to wave from an opposite room, Frittie climbed onto a chair to wave back to him. Suddenly, he leaned forwards, the chair slipped and he fell through the open window. Alice flew from the room and found him lying dazed but miraculously uninjured on the stone below. Her relief was short-lived. That evening, he suffered a brain haemorrhage and died before morning.
The death of her little brother was Alix’s first introduction to the hereditary ‘bleeding disease’ that would so blight her own life and bring such disaster to Russia[¨]. Her mother never came to terms with the loss. ‘To my grave,’ she wrote to Queen Victoria, ‘I shall carry this sorrow with me.’[23]
With Frittie’s death, Alice appeared to abandon her spiritual seeking in favour of a return to the comfort of her childhood faith, while, at the same time, she developed a heightened awareness of her own mortality and wrote prophetically to her mother:
“I feel more than ever that one should put nothing off; and children grow up so quickly and leave one, and I would long that mine should take nothing but the recollection of love and happiness from their home with them into the world’s fight, knowing that they have always a safe harbour and open arms to comfort and encourage them when they are in trouble.”[24]
Though Queen Victoria commissioned a statue of Frittie, which remains at Frogmore House on the Windsor estate, and invited the family to England for their annual holiday, her response to Alice’s grief was cold and unsympathetic in the extreme. The loss of a child, she suggested, was nothing to the loss of a husband. Her heartless reaction was, no doubt, a reprisal for Alice’s criticism of her own excessive mourning for beloved Albert and reflected the mounting irritation that the Queen felt towards her daughter in Darmstadt.
By the following year, when Alice gave birth to her last child, May, (an ‘enchanting little thing’ with sparkling eyes) Queen Victoria’s patience with Alice was reaching its limit. She could not deny that Alice had selflessly nursed her father through his last illness and had given her unwavering support through the early months of her bereavement but now her ‘excessive demands’ for more money, her lack of quietness and her constant ‘interference’ in matters that did not concern her were more than her mother cou
ld bear.
“She has done herself such harm,” the Queen complained to Vicky. “She has become so sharp and bitter, and no one wishes to have her in their house.”[25]
Though Queen Victoria was reluctant to admit it, the root cause of her annoyance was far more personal: Alice not only had the audacity to disapprove of her favourite highland servant the ubiquitous John Brown, but worse, she had dared to criticise the Queen herself.
Rumours of the Queen’s inordinate dependence on the rough-spoken ghillie were already circulating through the country. Republican papers even suggested that the Queen had secretly married Brown and some went so far as to imply that she had borne him a child. That the Queen was a little in love with him, there was no doubt. His devotion to her was absolute; nothing was too much trouble for him and she repaid him with complete confidence, making allowance for his drunkenness and allowing him, as Alice complained, to speak freely in her presence while her children were confined to discussing only those subjects which appealed to their mother.
It was not simply the Queen’s infatuation with the ghillie that irked her family so much as the imperious and disrespectful manner with which he treated other members of her household. If he deemed the Queen too tired to receive them, Brown thought nothing of denying her own children access to her rooms.
Alice was not the only member of the family to object to his constant presence; her brothers Bertie, Alfred and Leopold, could not stand the man; Vicky had gone so far as to suggest that all the Queen’s children should sign a petition demanding his removal from court; but outspoken Alice was most vociferous in her objections. Her complaints struck a raw nerve but now she went further and dared to voice openly what everyone else once whispered: the Queen had become so self-absorbed that she was neglecting her duties as Sovereign.
Since the death of Prince Albert in 1861, the Widow of Windsor had settled into a semi-reclusive existence, cut off from her people and refusing to appear in public ‘alone.’ In the early years of her widowhood, the country had sympathised with her grief but as the mourning continued unabated for over a decade, pity was rapidly turning into frustration. In the face of an absentee monarch, the republican movement was gaining ground to the extent that in 1864 a sign had even been hung on the gates of Buckingham Palace:
“These commanding premises to be let or sold, in consequence of the occupant's declining business.”
The Queen ignored the protests and neither ministers nor princes could edge her out of her self-indulgent isolation when Alice boldly declared it was time for the mourning to stop.
Alice had overstepped the mark, and the princess, who exhausted herself in serving the poor, was accused of having airs and graces, of having ‘too high an opinion of herself,’ and of upsetting her mother’s staff by her arrogance.
That year, in a fit of pique, the Queen threatened to refuse the Hessians the annual invitation to England and only Vicky’s tactful intervention persuaded her to grudgingly change her mind on condition that Alice should refrain from complaining and must accommodate her mother’s wishes. The change of heart undoubtedly came as a great relief to Alice’s daughters for whom the holidays in Windsor, Osborne or Balmoral were among the brightest and most exciting events of their childhood.
Chapter 4 - Frail Puny Babies
Waleses
Bertie: Albert Edward, Prince of Wales
Alexandra: ‘Aunt Alix’ Princess of Wales
Children of Bertie & Alexandra:
Eddy (Albert Victor)
George
Louise
Toria (Victoria)
Maud
Hessians
Alice: Queen Victoria’s second daughter
Louis: Alice’s husband
Children of Alice & Louis:
Victoria
Ella
Irène
Ernie
Alix
May
Hohenzollerns (Prussians)
Vicky (Victoria): Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter; Crown Princess of Prussia
Fritz (Frederick): Vicky’s husband, Crown Prince of Prussia
Children of Vicky & Fritz:
Willy (Wilhelm, William)
Charlotte
Henry
Moretta (Victoria Moretta)
Waldemar
Sophie
Mossy (Margaret)
The turrets of Windsor rising through the clouds, beckoned like a fairy-tale castle to the German cousins for whom few childhood pleasures were more thrilling than their regular visits to England. The sight of the ‘pretty little English houses,’ and their gardens, and above all, the pleasure of meeting ‘dearest grandmama’ again made the long journey and Irène’s sea-sickness suddenly seem worthwhile. Whatever her disputes with their parents, Queen Victoria was a kindly and tolerant grandmother who went out of her way to make their holidays a pleasure.
“There are none of us,” Alice wrote to her mother, “who would not gladly have our children live under the same roof where we passed such a happy childhood, with such a loving grandmama to take care of them.”[26]
Their boisterousness might irritate her nerves, and she could sigh that it was no wonder Alice appeared constantly exhausted with so many big children to care for, but the Queen was far more lenient with her grandchildren than she had ever been with their parents.
To four-year-old Sophie of Prussia, her tiny grandmother appeared like a ‘very very pretty little girl,’ while to the young Alix of Hesse she was ‘…a combination of a very august person and of a Santa Claus.’[27] Even when far away in Germany, their grandmother was seldom far from their thoughts. They celebrated her birthday with parties during which they sang the British national anthem, and they received constant assurances of her affection with short letters and gifts for their birthdays and Christmas, which never failed to delight them:
“They showed [the presents that the Queen had sent] to everyone,” Alice gratefully wrote to the Queen one Christmas, “shouting, ‘This is from my dear English Grandmama;’ and Ella, who is always sentimental added: ‘She is so very good my Grandmama.’ Irene could not be parted from the doll you gave her, nor Victoria from hers.”[28]
Visits to England brought even greater excitement.
“…Her voice was shy when she talked to us,” wrote one of her granddaughters, “even her smile was shy, for strange as it may seem, Queen Victoria had something shy about her till the last days of her life. She had tiny, even, white teeth and just a wee foreign accent when she spoke; and she filled us with awe.”[29]
As the Queen worked on her papers, the children played around her feet and on one occasion little Waldemar of Prussia released a live crocodile under her desk. They charged along the corridors of Windsor Castle, darting through rooms filled with priceless treasures in noisy games of hide and seek. Outside in the acres of woods and parklands, they rode on ponies or visited the farm and collection of exotic animals including an ostrich and a kangaroo.
Animals were an important feature in the lives of the Queen and her granddaughters, as dogs, cats, birds and other creatures were constant companions in their homes. Letters between members of the family are speckled with happy and sometimes tragic references to their pets: the Queen’s collie, Noble, and her puppies; the gift of a lamb for Alice’s birthday; Vicky’s missing cats; a finch killed by an owl in Darmstadt; and Beatrice’s little dog who was killed by a carriage on the Isle of Wight. Among the numerous portraits of the Queen and her children at Osborne House, there are paintings and statues of beloved pets which were viewed as part of the family. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had commissioned several prominent artists and sculptors – Edwin Henry Landseer, John Francis, and the silversmiths, Garrard’s – to portray his beloved greyhound, Eos, in oil, marble and silver. The wildlife artist, Joseph Wolf, was commission to paint the Queen’s favourite bullfinch; Friedrich Keyl painted several of her collies; and the Queen, herself a talented artist, made several sketches of her children with their anima
ls. Animals were so close to her heart that she openly supported the anti-vivisection league and permitted ‘Royal’ to be added to the name of the recently-founded Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Circus troupes and theatre companies were invited for the children’s entertainment and the Queen took particular pleasure in watching amateur theatricals performed by members of her family and household.
Sometimes the visits coincided with the Queen’s annual migration between her homes. At Balmoral, the Scottish castle despised by courtiers for its remoteness and by the household for its gloom, the children enjoyed pony rides amid spectacular scenery. At the beautiful Italianate Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, they played on the private beach, learned to swim, cooked and picnicked in the quaint Swiss Cottage, imported by Prince Albert for the practical education of his own children, or charged around the miniature Victoria Fort and Albert barracks, raising the standards of Prussia, Hesse and England.
Although inevitably, Grandmama plied them with questions and grilled them about their behaviour, education and development, she was equally quick to offer praise: Willy’s manners had improved; Charlotte’s German was faultless; Moretta’s handwriting was neat; Victoria was clever; Ella was wonderfully pretty; and Irène was good tempered and affectionate.
In stark contrast to the militaristic atmosphere of Potsdam or the homely New Palace in Darmstadt, there was something strangely exotic about the British Court. Though Queen Victoria clung to her seclusion from society, she surrounded herself with fascinating personalities, from the turbaned Indian secretaries and tartan-clad ghillies to a whole host of relatives of various ages and characters. Aunts and uncles from all over Europe wandered in and out of the palaces: Aunt Beatrice, only two years older than her eldest niece, was always a willing playmate, as was young Uncle Leopold, who refused to allow haemophilia to prevent him from living life to the full. Beautiful, artistic, though occasionally acerbic, Aunt Louise often came accompanied by her handsome Scottish husband, the Marquis of Lorne. There was intriguing Aunt Marie, a Russian Grand Duchess, and the German Uncle Christian who entertained visitors by displaying his collection of false eyes.
Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918 Page 4